The Weekend In Tiger Lax

TigerBlog rarely writes in the first person, as you can tell from this space every day.

This is strictly a "third-person zone." TB has always thought that maybe it would be better to switch to first person, though he has not done that. 

You know who always writes in first person? John McPhee, and he seems to know what he's doing.

Perhaps you saw the feature story that TigerBlog wrote on goalies yesterday. If not, you can see it HERE.

It was supposed to be a fun story, and so TB decided to go first person with it. He framed the story around what goes into being a goalie in general with Princeton's 22 goalies across nine teams (m/w soccer, m/w water polo, m/w lacrosse, m/w ice hockey and field hockey), along with what it's like to be a goalie's parent. 

To that end he threw in some of his own experiences with TigerBlog Jr. throughout the piece. He also talked to the parents of two Princeton goalies, and they had similar thoughts to his own. All the while he thought about his friend in Ohio whose daughter has started every game as a freshman in goal for a Division III school, and, well, there's something about being a goalie's parent.

As TB wrote at the end, he seriously thought about trying his hand at being a goalie, possibly at a field hockey practice. And maybe one day he will, though he wouldn't exactly count on it.

You have to be a special breed to be a goalie. Often the difference between winning and losing is the save or two that one goalie makes that another doesn't, and goalies know this full well. It's part of signing up for the position.

Two of the best goalies in the country will be on opposite ends of the field tomorrow, when Princeton plays Cornell in men's lacrosse in Ithaca at noon. For the winner, there is an outright Ivy League championship. For Princeton, it's Michael Gianforcaro, who is second in Division I in save percentage. For Cornell, it's Chayse Ierlan, who is sixth. They're 1-2 in the Ivy League, and Princeton's Griffen Rakower is third.

There are other subplots to the game. Princeton's Coulter Mackesy leads Division I in points per game; Cornell's C.J. Kirst is second. Mackesy figures to be matched against Cornell's Gavin Adler, who could be the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming Premier Lacrosse League draft.

It's fitting that it's Princeton vs. Cornell for the title. Cornell has won 30 Ivy League championships. Princeton has won 26. Nobody else is close.

The outright championship is a huge prize. There are other prizes down the road, including next weekend's Ivy tournament at Columbia (for tickets, click HERE).

The men's tournament is simple, unlike a year ago, when five teams entered the final weekend of the regular season tied for first. This time around, it's pretty clear, and nobody needs any help from anyone else.

Harvard is at Yale tomorrow, and the winner of that game will be the fourth seed. The winner of the Princeton-Cornell game will be the No. 1 seed and play either Harvard or Yale at 6 next Friday. The loser of Princeton-Cornell will play Penn at 8:30 (Penn is the second seed if it's playing Princeton or the third seed if it's playing Cornell, though that hardly matters).

The winners play next Sunday at noon for the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 

Easy, right? 

Contrast that with the women, then. So far, only one team (Penn) has clinched a spot, and the tournament will be held at Penn Park. Also, Columbia is mathematically eliminated.

And that's all that's known. In fact, there are 26 different scenarios of what can happen. That's even crazier than last year's men's race.

Princeton hosts Harvard Sunday at noon, so by then all of the Ivy games will have been played, leading to at least some clarity. Where does it stand now?

You can find out HERE, in the preview story on goprincetontigers.com.

 There are multiple scenarios where it could come down to goal differential to get in the tournament. 

Big Weekend At DeNunzio

Without knowing much about college women's water polo, who would be your guess for the top three teams in the current national rankings? 

TigerBlog guessed USC, UCLA and Stanford. It turns out they're ranked first, third and second. TB promises you he didn't look before writing that. 

It's probably not a shock to learn that of the top eight teams in the rankings, seven are from California (those three, plus UC-Irvine, Cal, Long Beach State and Fresno State) and the other is Hawaii. Once you get past those eight, there's a tie for ninth, and those teams are Princeton and Michigan. 

Those two are also the top seeds in the this weekend's College Water Polo Association tournament, which will be held tomorrow through Sunday at DeNunzio Pool.

At stake is an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Princeton is the home team and the No. 1 seed and has a bye into the semifinals Saturday at noon. 

Here is the complete schedule:

Tomorrow at 4 - No. 3 Harvard vs. No. 6 Bucknell
Tomorrow at 6 - No. 4 Brown vs. No. 5 St. Francis

Saturday at noon - No. 1 Princeton vs. Brown/St. Francis winner (semifinal)
Saturday at 2 - No. 2 Michigan vs. Harvard/Bucknell winner (semifinal)
Saturday at 4 - Brown/St. Francis loser vs. Harvard/Bucknell loser (fifth place)

Sunday at 10 - third place game
Sunday at noon - championship game

Michigan, by the way, has won seven straight championships and 12 overall. 

As TB thought about it, he wondered why Princeton and Michigan would have such strong programs. In fact, after those two, the next four schools in the rankings are again California schools. These are players who never play indoors, and yet when they come to schools like Princeton and Michigan, there are obviously no outdoor matches. 

Despite that, Princeton is an impressive 8-1 this year against California schools, including a win over Long Beach State (and a loss to UCLA). Princeton and Michigan have split their two regular season meetings, with an 11-9 Tiger win in a game played in Providence and a 7-6 Michigan win in Ann Arbor.

The Wolverines have one player on their roster from the state of Michigan and 13 players from California. There are also two from New Zealand, two from Canada and one from Hungary, as well as one from Illinois.

Princeton's roster also features 13 players from California. There are none from New Jersey, but there are four from Connecticut and one from New York, as well as one from Serbia, one from Australia and one from Canada.

Recruiting from California is a must obviously. It's why teams from the East make so many trips there during the regular season.

This is not a weekend with a great many home events, but the water polo is a big one. So is the women's lacrosse game against Harvard Sunday at noon, as the Tigers, Crimson and four other teams scramble for the three remaining Ivy tournament spots. 

TB is pretty sure a win gets Princeton in no matter what. With the other three league games all on Saturday, there will at least be much greater clarity by the time Princeton and Harvard have the opening draw. 

Remember, that's a noon start Sunday, not Saturday. It's also Senior Day for the seven Tiger seniors.

There is also home rowing, with the open women against Penn and the heavyweight men against Brown. 

You don't have to travel too far from Princeton to see one of the greatest events in college athletics, the Penn Relays. The track and field carnival, held at Penn's Franklin Field, was first contested as a matchup between Princeton and Penn back in 1893 (Princeton won). The first actual Penn relays were held two years later. 

If you've never gone, you should. It's not only for track and field fans. It's a pretty awesome event all around. TigerBlog is pretty sure it's the largest track and field meet in the world, with competitions among all age groups beyond just the collegiate and elite levels.

There are, of course, all kinds of other events involving Princeton teams this weekend. 

For the full schedule, click HERE.

Catching A Draft

 If you read yesterday's entry early in the morning, then you missed the word "enough" in the first sentence. 

It made a big difference. Instead of saying that he couldn't recommend his Kane recovery shoes "enough," TigerBlog said he "couldn't recommend them." One word. Big impact. 

Anyway, it was corrected around 9:30. If you read before then, TB suggests going out and buying your own Kanes. You won't regret it. 

Okay, "enough" about that.

It's the last week of April. The weather is decidedly in the spring mode, for that short period of time between when the last of the cold leaves and the temperature sprints into the 80s. Now? You have chilly mornings and beautiful afternoons and evening. Can't ask for much more than that.

It used to be that spring lasted a few months. Now it's just a few weeks. 

So what should TB talk about during this great spring weather? Football, of course.

For the rest of today's entry, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

The Caramel And Black

TigerBlog cannot recommend the Kane shoes that he got from the equipment staff earlier this year.

If you've never seen them, they look like Crocs, but they are a much different shoe. They are called Revive recovery shoes. This is from the Kane website:

A transformative, sustainably designed injection molded sneaker for active recovery.

They're also sustainable. As it says on the website: 

Made in Brazil from sugarcane-based EVA foam.

Whatever they're made of and whatever recovery properties they have, they are incredibly comfortable. They're probably the most comfortable shoes TB has ever had, for that matter. 

There's only one problem that TB has noticed, and it's also on the website. TigerBlog's Kane's are orange and white, perfect Princeton colors. The only thing is that the Kane website calls them "white and caramel."

What the heck? Caramel? 

It's Orange and Black, not Caramel and Black. It's William of Nassau of the House of Orange, not William of Nassau of the House of Caramel. C'mon now. 

Be that as it may, they are great shoes. 

As for the Caramel and Black, there are spring teams who are in their Ivy League tournament, hoping to host their Ivy tournament and hoping to be in their Ivy tournament. 

For the rest of today's blog, click HERE or go to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. Each day's entry will be available there. 

The Home Run

Has there ever been a baseball stadium that opened with back-to-back home runs by the other team? 

There has been now. Princeton was a very rude guest in Cornell's brand-new Booth Field. About the only pitch that was safe from the Tigers was the one Mr. Booth threw out to open the new facility. 

Matt Scannell and Eric Marasheski got the party started with blasts in the first two at-bats in the new stadium. By the end of the weekend, Princeton had hit 11 in all, running their season total to a program-record 49. Kyle Vinci pushed his single-season record total to 16, and he had himself a 14-RBI weekend.

The Tigers won all three games against Cornell, running their Ivy record to 10-5 with three games left at Yale and home against Brown. The team is very much in the hunt for a spot in the first four-team Ivy tournament, not to mention winning the league title and grabbing the host spot that goes along with that.

The theme of the weekend was the home run, both the literal and figurative type. 

For the rest of today's entry, click HERE or go to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog, where the blog can be read every day.

Beneath A Bigger Picture, There Are Ivy Titles To Be Won

For anyone who is an Ivy League sports fan, the news about Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens hits hard. 

There are some things that are bigger than rivalries and games and championships. Ivy League athletics are unique, and the people who compete in them, coach them, administrate them and root for them buy into a different brand of college athletics than exist anywhere else.

Teevens, if you missed it, was involved in a terrible bicycle accident in Florida. His wife announced earlier this week that Teevens has had one leg amputated and has suffered spinal chord injuries as well.

The Princeton-Dartmouth football rivalry has been a great one in recent years. Teevens and Princeton head coach Bob Surace threw out the first pitch at a Yankees game in 2019, before the teams played at Yankee Stadium to commemorate the 150th anniversary of college football. The 2018 game between the teams in Princeton is one of the greatest Ivy football games ever played.

There is no one at Princeton, or anywhere in the league, who isn't rooting for Teevens. TigerBlog has never met him, but the people he knows who know him have only good things to say about him. 

This is a quote TB saw from Eli Manning: 

"Thoughts and prayers are with Coach Teevens and his family. I have known Coach since I was 12 years old when I attended Tulane football camp. There is not a better man."

For the rest of today's TigerBlog, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

Baseball Record, Softball Showdown

If you're going to set a record, you might as well do it in style.  

Isn't that right, Kyle Vinci? 

The Princeton record for home runs in a season had stood for 27 years until Vinci came along this spring. Vinci, a high school teammate of New York Yankees' shortstop phenom Anthony Volpe at Delbarton, went into yesterday's game against Rider tied for the single-season record with Mike Ciminiello. He came out of it with the record all his own.

He did so in the biggest way possible, too, blasting a grand slam in the eighth that took the Tigers from down one to up 9-6, which would be the final score. As TigerBlog said, you might as well do it in style.
TB's day started with a voicemail asking Princeton to take it easy on Rider. 

Who was the caller? 

To read the rest of today's entry, click HERE. TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog.

Big Wednesday In Philly

TigerBlog's post yesterday on the birth of Wyatt Madalon brought a lot of feedback, most of it on one subject.

What were TB's diapering tips, especially for boys? 

First, in general, if you have a television in your bedroom, leave it on, with the sound turned off, all night long. That way, when the baby wakes up, you won't have to turn the lights on for feeding and changing and such, so the baby starts to get a sense of the difference between night and day. Also, you can watch the TV while you're feeding the baby. Win-win.

As for a boy, create a flap about 1/2 inch wide at the top of the diaper and then fold it back towards the baby's tummy. Trust him on this one. It'll come in handy one day.

Any other random advice TB can offer? Just let him know what subjects you want covered. Maybe he could start a side blog on the art of child-raising.

Having a newborn is not easy. Having one when your other children have moved past the baby stage is even harder. You forget all the things that went into the first year or two of child-raising.

Ah, how long ago it was. When Miss TigerBlog came along, three years after her brother, TB had no idea how to put the infant car seat back in the car and a bunch of stuff like that. And now? She is in Canada making some sort of presentation about an aerospace subject TB wouldn't understand in a million years. 

It goes by really, really quickly.

MTB's former team, the Princeton women's lacrosse team, has itself a big game tonight at Penn, with the opening draw at 7.

For the rest of today's entry, please click HERE and be redirected to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The full blog is available each day on the main website.

Wyatt, Wyatt, Wyatt

Have you ever driven six hours — about an hour of which was spent in a driving rainstorm — with someone whose wife just had a baby?  

TigerBlog can cross that off his list. Here's the story:

TigerBlog and Matt Madalon rolled out of Princeton late Friday morning on their way to the men's lacrosse game at Dartmouth.

The two were in a rental car, instead of on the bus. Why? Madalon needed a way to get back in case his wife Ashley went into labor with their third child.

Of course, this seemed unlikely. They had just come from the doctor and were given the okay. The baby wasn't due four more days, meaning today. What could go wrong? 

For the rest of today's blog, click HERE to be taken to goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. You can find the blog, and all of the archives, there every day.

Pennant Race

Jalen Travis is a big man.

How big? The Princeton offensive tackle is listed at 6-7, 310, and he may be even larger than that. 

When TigerBlog read that Travis was heading to law school after graduation, he thought about how intimidating it will be when he is the opposing counsel in a courtroom. 

"I object."
"Overruled. I mean, sustained. Sustained. What did I say? I meant sustained."

Travis was honored last week as one of 62 recipients of a Truman Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 towards graduate study. From the award's website: 

“Truman Scholars demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, a commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit sector, and academic excellence.” 

For the rest of today's blog, which talks about Travis and about the weekend in Ivy baseball, click HERE or go to goprincetontigers/sports/tigerblog. TigerBlog is now available every day on the main website.

Remembering Larry Ellis

TigerBlog saw the back of a t-shirt yesterday that read "35 Years At 1895," a reference to the 35 years that the Princeton softball team played at Class of 1895 Field. 

There were a bunch of stats on the back of the shirt, including one that said "2,504," which is the number of runs scored by Princeton in its games at the field in those 35 years. It was the number that grabbed TB's attention.

If you're a serious Princeton fan, you know what the number 2,504 is one greater than, right? TB doesn't have to tell you. 

If you don't know, Bill Bradley scored 2,503 points in his Princeton basketball career. That's in three varsity years, with no three-point shot. 

It's an extraordinary number, one that becomes even more extraordinary when you consider that for all of the great players Princeton has had, before and after Bradley, all of the guys who played in the NBA or Europe or anywhere else, nobody has come within 878 points of him.

Is that record unbreakable? TigerBlog can't imagine that anyone will be taking that one down. It's lasted 58 years now. Put that number on the list of the unbreakable, along with 56 (straight games with hit by Joe DiMaggio), 511 (wins by Cy Young) 2,857 (points by Wayne Gretzky, who by the way has more assists — 1,963 — than any other player has points) and 29-2 1/2 (Bob Beamon's long jump).

Oh, wait a second. 

When Bob Beamon soared to that distance in the long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City, it shattered the existing record by nearly two feet. For years, nobody came close to touching the record, and it was among those considered unbreakable — until it was broken in 1991, when Mike Powell leapt 29-4 1/4. Now, 32 years later, Beamon's jump is still second. 

Why bring up Beaman? He grew up in New York City, Jamaica, to be exact. It was there that he was first mentored by the then-Jamaica High School coach. His name? Larry Ellis.

That's the same Larry Ellis who went on to become one of Princeton's most legendary coaches ever, with a 22-year run with the men's track and field program. He passed away in 1998 at the age of 70.

This is a quote Ellis' obituary from Craig Masback, an NCAA champion at Princeton in 1976 under Ellis and a leader in the sport in his own right:

"This is a great loss for USA Track & Field and the world of track and field. It’s also a great loss for me personally. He was far more than my college coach, he was a mentor, an inspiration, a leader and someone who very substantially shaped my whole life by both his guidance and example. He was the one that said to me that anything was possible in track and field and in life. He gave me the belief that I should pursue my dreams. I’ll forever thank him for that."

TigerBlog knew Ellis, and the word that comes to mind to best describe him is "gentleman." He was a beloved, universally respected figure, at Princeton and in track and field.

Today, Larry Ellis' memory lives on in many ways, including with the Larry Ellis Invitational, which will be held at Weaver Track and Field Stadium today and tomorrow. A complete schedule of events can be seen HERE.

The track and field teams are two of 15 Princeton teams who compete this weekend. If you're looking for home events, you have them on land (women's tennis, women's lacrosse, baseball, women's golf) and sea (women's lightweight rowing, women's open rowing, men's heavyweight rowing).

If you're in Ithaca, you can see a men's lightweight showdown between No. 1 Princeton and No. 8 Cornell, as well as the softball series between first-place Princeton and Cornell. If you're in Hanover, you can see Princeton play Dartmouth in men's lacrosse in a game that will have huge implications for the Ivy tournament.

The complete schedule can be found HERE.

Writing Time

TigerBlog went to a college that didn't require a senior thesis, so he has no idea what the feeling is like for a Princeton senior who has just handed one in.

For the last few decades, of course, he has seen the joy that these seniors exude — including from his own daughter — once the task is finished. It's a joyfulness at both the completion of such an all-consuming task and a realization that they have navigated the last big hurdle to their Princeton degree.

This time of year is "hand in your thesis" time. The due date is not like Dean's Day, where everything across the University is due at the same time. In the case of a senior thesis, the date it needs to be handed in is determined by the department, which is why some seniors are now literally basking in the sunshine while others are figuratively under a dark cloud.

Kate Mulham and Alex Slusher, both lacrosse players, are two of the ones in the sun. They both had just handed in their theses within hours of when they spoke with TB for this week's Princeton Laxcast (you can listen HERE), and again, the sense of relief was obvious.

TigerBlog really liked what Slusher said about the whole thesis experience, how it's a chance to research and write about an area that otherwise might not have presented itself within the requirements of a Princeton major. Like anyone else, TB presumes, Slusher also mentioned 

Claire Donovan of the field hockey team also handed in her thesis this week. As many Princeton students will do these days, she posted about it on social media. Included in her post was her dedication page:

Donovan lost both her father, a former Tiger men's lacrosse player, and her brother within a span of a few months during her junior year at Princeton. TB wrote about the Donovan's HERE this past fall, when Claire was helping the team to an undefeated Ivy League season. 

If you read the story before, or if you just checked it out, the dedication comes a bit more into focus. 

TigerBlog checked in with someone else yesterday who is still working on her thesis. That would be Josephine de La Bruyere, a history major who is writing her thesis on European natural history and explorers from 1500-1700.

In her case, it's due this coming Tuesday. TB's last message to her was "imagine how good you'll feel in a week."

If her last name is familiar, that's because she is the sister of former Princeton track and field standout Emily de La Bruyere. Josephine, in her own words, "didn't the fast genes."

What Josephine did get was the writing gene. She's written for a few outlets, including the Daily Princetonian. 

TigerBlog stumbled onto the story she wrote for Deadspin on, of all subjects, Princeton wrestling coach Chris Ayres and the job he's done rebuilding the program. You can read the story HERE.

It's a story that is really well written. Here's a sample of something she wrote immediately after talking about the growth of girls in the sport:

Still — wrestling championships are the rare event at which women walk right into their restroom, and the men’s line stretches out the door.

That's quick and subtle, but it does such a great job of making the point she's trying to make, which is that the overwhelming majority of those who compete in and watch wrestling are men. And she does it in a way that paints a visual in your mind that really hammers that home. 

Here's something else:

Ayres, beaming, leaned against a corner wall. “Can you imagine this party if we hadn’t got a champ? With these frickin’ balloons? Holy Christ. But we believe. We buy the balloons. In this party, in this program. I just believe.”

The reader can completely picture this. Josephine has just finished writing about the party after Patrick Glory won his NCAA championship. She didn't need to overstate anything about Ayres. She threw in "beaming" to capture his joy, but she lets the quote, which is perfect, stand on its own.

Anyway, it's a great story. Is there writing in your future, TB asked her? It turns out that there will be.

There's writing in her present too. There's still work to be done on the senior thesis, and then there is the joy that handing it in will bring.

Drafting Abby, And Tigers-Greyhounds On A Perfect Spring Night

For all of you Princeton fans who bought Dallas Wings stuff, or just started rooting for the team, after its selection of Bella Alarie, good news.

You can still root for the Wings now that Alarie is retired. The WNBA held its annual draft Monday night, and the Wings selected Princeton alum Abby Meyers with the No. 11 pick of the first round. 

To TigerBlog, Meyers will always be "Princeton alum Abby Meyers," as opposed to "Maryland's Abby Meyers," even though Meyers was the Terps second-leading scorer this past season. It's the same as referring to Michael Sowers as being from Duke, as opposed to Princeton.

Alarie, by the way, was also pretty excited about her former team's selection, as you can see here:

From one @PrincetonWBB legend to another …

One @IvyLeague POY to another …

One @WNBA 1st round draft pick to another …

One @DallasWings to another … @bella_alarie 🤝 Abby Meyers ‘22

🧡🖤💙💚 pic.twitter.com/hAKpp7C318

— Princeton WBB (@PrincetonWBB) April 11, 2023

That is Princetonian stuff right there. If you didn't know, Meyers and Alarie grew up close to each other in Montgomery County, outside of Washington, D.C. 

Next up for Meyers is making the roster and establishing herself as a WNBA regular. The Wings had a need for shooting and scoring, and they chose five perimeter threats among their six picks. Meyers, at No. 11, was the fourth selection for Dallas, who also grabbed Villanova's Maddie Siegrist, the nation's leading scorer, at No. 3.

TigerBlog has always been a big Meyers fan. In fact, he wrote this about her back in 2018, after Princeton defeated Penn 63-34 in the Ivy League tournament final in a game in which Meyers nearly outscored Penn in the first half:

She plays with complete control, composure and confidence, not to mention extraordinary skill. As great a shooter as she is - and it was almost stunning yesterday when the ball didn't go in when she shot it - she might be a better ballhandler. 

TB sends his congratulations to Meyers. He also sends his congratulations to the Princeton and Loyola women's lacrosse players, coaches, fans and officials on tonight's weather forecast.

A little more than a year ago, Princeton traveled to Loyola for a midweek game. How was the weather in Baltimore that night? It was horrific. It poured the entire game, and the temperature was around 40. The wind kicked up and down the field to make it even more fun.

Loyola won that game 16-15. Princeton came out of that game with so many sick players that it had to push its next game back three weeks. 

TigerBlog spoke to Tiger senior Kate Mulham as part of the Princeton Laxcast, and she called the game "almost like a fever dream." She should know — she had a 103 fever afterwards.

The teams meet again tonight at 7 on Sherrerd Field. TB starts with the weather forecast: Clear skies, 75 degrees. That's at 7. There is a zero percent chance of rain. It's basically the complete opposite of last year.

As for the game, it's the last non-league game of the regular season for Princeton. Loyola comes into the game with a 10-2 record, including a 5-0 Patriot League mark. The 11th-ranked Greyhounds, whose losses have been to No. 9 Florida and and No. 1 Syracuse, have scored at least 19 goals in each of their last three games.

The Tigers defeated Columbia 19-4 Saturday afternoon to go to 2-1 in the league. Grace Taukus pushed her career point total to 95, while Kendall Dean, Lane Calkins and Abigail Roberts all had their first career goal.

Princeton has another quick turnaround after tonight, this time to its game Saturday at home against Brown. After that, it'll be a game Wednesday at Penn, followed by a trip to Dartmouth for a game three days later and then Senior Day at home against Harvard on April 30. 

The Ivy League standings look like this: Penn is 3-0, followed by 3-1 Yale and 2-1 Princeton, 2-2 Harvard, Cornell and Brown and then 1-3 Dartmouth and 0-4 Columbia. 

The top four teams meet in the Ivy League tournament at the home field of the No. 1 seed. Princeton is assured of at least a tie for the league championship by winning out. Penn would get an outright title by doing the same. There could also be a three-way tie at 6-1 between Princeton, Yale and Penn, though there's a long way to go.

In the meantime, there's the game tonight against Loyola. It doesn't have any Ivy implications, but hey, what better way is there to spend a 75-degree evening?

That's A No-No

TigerBlog saw the video of the ball as it left the bat and thought immediately that he was glad that he wasn't the official scorer. 

Then he saw the end of the play and thought "Yup. Error."

He's talking about the craziness that was the game Saturday between the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts (the Reds organization) and the Rocket City Trash Pandas (outside of Huntsville, Ala., and an affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels). 

Actually, before he gets into what happened, TigerBlog will give you a quick quiz: Which of the following is not an actual nickname for a Major League affiliate Minor League Baseball team:

A) Yard Goats
B) Mighty Mussels
C) Rumble Ponies
D) Jumbo Shrimp
E) Lugnuts

TB will have the answer at the end.

Anyway, the game between the Lookouts and Trash Pandas was something rather unique. Chattanooga won the game 7-5, which doesn't seem like a big deal, until you realize that Chattanooga also got no-hit. 

Here's something you won't see too often:

The seven runs all came in the same inning. Who needs a hit when you can get: five walks, two hit batters, a wild pitch and an error by the centerfielder on the only ball that was actually put in play. In fact, it was a pretty solid shot, and the centerfielder had been playing in. When TB saw it, he thought that the official scorer might have been put into a tough spot on this one, until he saw the outfielder circle under it and just drop it.

By the way, the pitch before was on an 0-2 count and barely, if at all, missed the outside corner. Had it been called a strike (and way worse pitches have been called strikes), then Chattanooga would have trailed 3-1. 

If you want advice on the proper way to no-hit a team, perhaps the Trash Pandas should ask Princeton softball pitcher Alexis Laudenslager. She seems to have it down pat.

Laudenslager no-hit Columbia 8-0 Sunday afternoon, giving her an amazing third no-hitter this year and five no-hitters for her career. Both of those are now Princeton records, and Princeton softball has had some great, great pitchers through the years.

For the year, Laudenslager has now allowed 68 hits in 86 innings, with 117 strikeouts and 37 walks. Within the league, she is 7-1 and has allowed 20 hits in 43 innings, with 59 strikeouts, 21 walks, a .95 WHIP and a 0.81 ERA.

By the way, her 117 strikeouts lead the league. The next-best total? That would be 68.

It would appear that she is well on the way to her second straight Ivy League Pitcher of the Year and first-team All-Ivy League honors.

Laudenslager has helped Princeton to a 10-2 record in the Ivy League with three more league weekends to go (at Cornell this weekend, followed by a home series against Harvard and a trip to Dartmouth). The Tigers are in first place, one game ahead of the Crimson, and they're closing in on one of the four spots for the first four-team Ivy League tournament. 

Princeton is one game up on Harvard, who is 9-3. After that, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia and Cornell all have five or six losses, with Brown with seven and Penn with 11. Not everyone has played the same number of games to date.

The baseball team dropped two of three against Penn this weekend, but the Tigers are still over .500 at 5-4, though the Ivy season is not yet at the halfway point. As is the case in softball, this year will feature a four-team tournament instead of a championship series between the top two teams (or before that, the two division winners).

Princeton has four Ivy weekends left, meaning three games against Columbia (this weekend at home) and then at Cornell, at Yale and home against Brown.

The league standings have Columbia and Harvard tied for first at 7-2, followed by 6-3 Penn and 5-4 Princeton. From there, you have Yale and Brown at 4-5, Cornell at 3-6 and Dartmouth at 0-9. In other words, Princeton is as close to first as it is to seventh.

Oh, and the answer to the nickname question: It was a trick question. They all are actual nicknames.

"You Should Write About Women's Water Polo"

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well as GPT before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available.  

 Okay, so here's a quick story to start your Monday:

As TigerBlog mentioned last fall, his 87-year-old father recently retired after nearly 65 years in the insurance business. As a man with no hobbies at all, FatherBlog is very bored. When TB asked his father what he did all day, he said he likes to stand in the lobby of his building on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and talk to the people who come in and out.

FB has also attended a local lecture series, where he's listened to speakers discuss topics like Watergate and Vietnam. TB suggested to his father that he volunteer to give one of the talks, and that appears to be what he's done.

His expertise consist of four areas — the insurance business, traveling (he has been pretty much everywhere), food (he's eaten pretty much everything) and baseball. It appears that he may be giving a talk on the last of those. 

FatherBlog went to Game 5 of the 1969 World Series and saw the game where the Miracle Mets finished off the powerful Baltimore Orioles. He took his ticket stub and framed it, and that hung on the wall in TigerBlog's house for years after that.

At some point, FatherBlog gave the framed ticket to TigerBlog. A week ago, FB asked TB if he still had it, because he wanted to use it to as part of his talk. This led TB to try to figure out where it is, because 1) he knows he'd never have thrown it away and 2) he has moved quite a few times since the 1980s and it could be anywhere. 

A few days ago he went through a bunch of old boxes to see if he could find the framed ticket, and he couldn't. Of course, he got distracted when he found several hundred photos of when he was younger, including from a school trip he took in high school to Switzerland, Austria and Germany. Those trips used to coincide with spring break, and as such, TB and his high school friends found themselves in Switzerland on Easter Sunday. 

The tour leader, who was also the German teacher in TB's high school (and a very funny man), took the group, around half of which was Jewish, to a church for an Easter service. Here are TB's two memories: 1) it was all in Latin and 2) it was mesmerizing. 

And that is TB's way of saying he hopes everyone had a great Easter weekend. And it's also his way of segueing into the Princeton women's water polo team, which did have a great Easter weekend.

TigerBlog got a comment last week that suggested it was time to start writing about the women's water polo team, and that is certainly spot on.

Princeton is now 25-2 and ranked seventh in the country. The Tigers swept No. 14 Harvard and No. 20 Brown Saturday in Providence, moving to 7-0 in the College Water Polo Association.

The win over Harvard came by a 10-8 score in overtime. As with any OT game, this one had no shortage of drama, including having the Crimson tie it with 18 seconds to go. Princeton then outscored Harvard 3-1 in the extra period, and Kate Mallery's fifth of the game sealed it after Harvard had cut it to one with 38 seconds to play.

The second game wasn't quite as dramatic, as Kate Yelensky led Princeton with three goals in an 8-5 win. Neither team scored in the fourth quarter.

Lindsey Lucas made 25 saves for Princeton in the two games. 

Princeton's two losses have come against UCLA (ranked third) and Wagner (ranked 16th). The Tigers finish the regular season this weekend in Ann Arbor, with games against Michigan (ranked 13th), Bucknell and St. Francis (Pa.). 

The CWPA tournament, with an automatic NCAA bid on the line, will be held in DeNunzio Pool the final weekend of April. The championship game will be noon on Sunday, April 30.

By then, TB had better have found the framed ticket.

A House Sort Of Divided

 TigerBlog noticed the most updated standings for the Learfield Sports Directors' Cup, released yesterday.

The result is that he's able to write one of his favorite sentences: Princeton is the only non-Power Five school in the Top 20. Schools are awarded points based on NCAA championship event participation and success.

The Tigers checked in at No. 14. The only other non-Power Five school in the first 39 on the list was BYU, and the Cougars will be moving into the Big XII this coming fall. Princeton got points in the winter from men's basketball, women's basketball, wrestling, men's indoor track and field, men's swimming and diving and co-ed fencing.

Princeton finished 18th a year ago for its best finish ever. The Cup has been awarded every year since 1994, and Princeton has been the highest finishing Ivy League school in all but three years. Princeton has also routinely been the top finishing FCS school and non-Power Five school.

It speaks to the great overall success, and sustained success, that Princeton Athletics has enjoyed through the decades. Can Princeton beat its record of a year ago? It won't be easy, though Princeton is looking good to finish in the top 30 for the eighth time and top 40 for the 18th time in the 27 years of the award. 

Check back in June to see.

In the meantime, when the 2022-23 Princeton Athletic year began, TigerBlog circled a few dates on his calendar, and one of them was April 8.

Why? 

It's because tomorrow will be the day that Princeton hosts Columbia in women's lacrosse at 3:30, which means that it'll bring Lions' freshman Ali Surace to take on the school whose football team is coached by her father Bob. 

Surace (Ali, that is) has played in all 11 Columbia games so far, starting the last six. A defender, she has three caused turnovers and four ground balls. Her bio on Columbia's website reads this way:

Parents are Lisa (Princeton ’92) and Bob (Princeton ’90)…Father is Head Coach of Princeton University Football…Mother played soccer at Princeton, father played football

Yes, it'll be an interesting day for the Surace family. 

As for Princeton, the Tigers are looking to bounce back from a 19-17 loss at St. Joe's Wednesday afternoon. Princeton is 1-1 in the Ivy League, one of three teams with one loss (Cornell, Brown), behind unbeatens Yale and Penn. For Princeton, a perfect afternoon would have the Tigers defeat Columbia and Penn defeat Yale, which would mean that Princeton would be assured of no worse than a tie for the league title by winning out from there, including a visit to Penn in two weeks.

The women's game is the second game of a Sherrerd Field doubleheader. While the Princeton women have an Ivy game that they need, the men's team steps out of the league to take on Syracuse at noon. 

Princeton and Syracuse have a remarkable history, despite the fact that this will only be the 30th meeting between the two. Between them, they put together the greatest run of two teams in NCAA lacrosse history, as one or the other won every national championship from 1992 through 2004 except for 1999 and 2003. 

From 1992-2003, every Princeton season ended either with an NCAA title or an NCAA loss to Syracuse. During that time, Princeton was 4-6 against Syracuse in the postseason and 21--0 against everyone else; Princeton won six titles in those 12 seasons.

After this, there are three Ivy games for the Tigers, who are at Dartmouth, home against Harvard and at Cornell. At 2-1 in the league, Princeton would be assured of a share of the title by winning out. The Tigers also are looking to get into the Ivy tournament, something that eluded the team last year, when it reached the Final Four. 

The lacrosse games are two of the 30 events involving Princeton teams this weekend. Among the other big events are men's and women's tennis against Columbia and Cornell (men home against Columbia Friday and at Cornell Sunday; women at Columbia Friday and home against Cornell Sunday), home softball against Penn, baseball at Penn, Princeton Invitational men's golf, home men's lightweight rowing and home women's rugby.

The complete schedule is HERE.

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available. 

A Night With Jeff And Ted

 

TigerBlog starts today with 12 minutes of one of the greatest characters in television history.

Seriously. TB would put him among the 10 best of all time, and that's saying something. 

Oh, and by the way, this may have some language issues, though TB is pretty sure you won't mind, and that you'll be rolling on the floor 13 minutes from now. So without further ado, here's 12 minutes of Roy Kent:

If you've never seen "Ted Lasso," then you need to stop what you're doing, go to Apple TV and start to binge.

If you have seen "Ted Lasso" but haven't seen "Shrinking," then you need to follow the steps above, only make it "Shrinking" instead. You'll be glad you did.

If you have seen both, then you can go about your day as normal. 

The most recent episode of "Ted Lasso," which was released yesterday, includes a tribute to Princeton's own Grant Wahl, who passed away over the winter while covering the World Cup in Qatar. Grant, in addition to being one of the world's all-time greatest soccer writers (and a former student worker in the Princeton Office of Athletic Communications), provided assistance to the "Ted Lasso" writers in developing certain storylines.

The episode ended with a tribute to Grant. It was pretty special.

Elsewhere, TigerBlog has been working on some of his ancestry. He's found his great-grandfather and then a few other living cousins he never knew he had.  

One of those cousins is named Ned Price. He has not yet found if he is related to Ted Price, Princeton Class of 1990.

That Price, and Jeff Ingold, were classmates on the men's squash team, and they have both gone on to overwhelming success, Price in the video game industry and Ingold in television comedies. They will be reunited tonight on the stage in McCosh 10, when they are joined by Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack for the Princeton Varsity Club Jake McCandless Speaker Series.

You can get more information on the event HERE.

As an aside, Price and Ingold played for the great Bob Callahan, who passed away several years ago from a brain tumor. Callahan was one of the best human beings who ever walked into Jadwin Gym, and seeing his photo with Price and Ingold in the story made TB smile, and feel sad.

Ingold is a leading creative voice behind, among a lot of other great shows, "Ted Lasso" and "Shrinking." He's won back-to-back Emmy's with "Ted Lasso," and his resume also includes shows like "The Office," "Parks and Rec" and "Scrubs."

Price is the Founder of Insomniac Games, a leading video game developer than is now a part of Sony's Playstation Studio. Insomniac has produced the likes of Marvel's Spider Man, the Ratchet and Clank series and the Spyro the Drago. 

The event tonight is free and open to the public. 

TigerBlog had the great opportunity to speak with Ingold over a year ago for a feature story he wrote on goprincetontigers.com. You can read that story HERE.

Ingold was the college roommate for four years of Tom Barnds, a men's lacrosse player who now has two sons on the current team. It was Barnds who first told TB about Ingold, and this was long after TB was first hooked on "Ted Lasso."

In fact, when TB first started watching the first episode, he was reluctant to do so and figured he'd give it 10 minutes, because he thought it might be too much of a caricature. By the 10-minute mark, he was hooked. It's funny. It's poignant. The acting and writing are tremendous. It's no surprise that it has been as recognized as it has.

The same is true of "Shrinking." It took about five minutes to get hooked on that one as well.

So as he said, if you haven't seen it, get to it. Or, maybe you can start tomorrow. Tonight you should come see Ingold and Price.

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available. 

 

Winning

If you're on campus today, you have a chance to watch baseball and softball without having to move around much.

Both teams are home today, the baseball team at 3 against Seton Hall and the softball team at 4 against Lehigh. Given the proximity of the two fields now, watching both is easy.

The softball team will be home again this weekend, when it plays three against Columbia. The baseball team will be close by, though not quite close enough to see from the softball field, as the Tigers will play their weekend series at Penn.

Both teams are very much in the hunt for the league title and the four Ivy tournament spots. The softball team is currently 7-2 in the league and tied for first with Harvard. The baseball team is also tied for first, though at 4-2, that tie is a five-way tie, with Penn, Yale, Columbia and Harvard.

Obviously all league games are big. 

Getting to the postseason is something that Princeton did a lot of last month. Actually, winning in general was. Here's something you as a Princeton fan will like to get your Wednesday started:

This. Was. March.

National Champs ✅
Sweet Sixteen ✅
Conference Titles ✅
All-Americans ✅#PrincetonPros ✅
Playoff Wins ✅
No-Hitters ✅
Hole-In-One ✅

What a month for Princeton Athletics!

🧡🖤🏆🥇🥈🐯 pic.twitter.com/Me5jnEatqE

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) April 4, 2023

That's a lot of winning for one month, and it doesn't even cover everything that happened for the Tigers in March. It was already April when TigerBlog walked out of the Caldwell Field House Saturday afternoon as members of the women's rugby team were heading inside.

"How'd you do?" he asked.

And then they got to say the words that they have worked so hard to say:

"We won."

Another player chimed in that well, they had gone 1-2 on the day, but TB cut her off. 

"You won," he said.

Princeton, in its first year of varsity women's rugby, had defeated Navy 17-14 at the West Chester Sevens event earlier in the day. It's clearly a learning process for the program, which will certainly get there under head coach Josie Ziluca. 

When TB saw the women's rugby players, he was just leaving after Princeton's 16-12 win over Brown in men's lacrosse. Coulter Mackesy was the Ivy League men's lacrosse Player of the Week for the second straight week after his three-goal, three-assist performance in the game.

That outing followed the one a week earlier, in which Mackesy had career highs with eight goals and 10 points in a 23-10 win over Yale. Mackesy, who has scored at least three goals in seven of Princeton's eight games, is getting the recognition he deserves, with the two Ivy honors and with being named to the Tewaaraton Award watchlist.

Mackesy is the one who has earned all the big awards of late, but a special recognition needs to go to junior defenseman Colin Freer. It was Freer who restarted the Princeton chapter of "Best Buddies," and he is now the campus president of the organization.

The "Best Buddies" program brings together people of all ages with and without intellectual disabilities. Under Freer's leadership, the Brown game was a "Best Buddies" outing. 

One of those participants is Bret Fleming, a 40-year-old Best Buddies Global Ambassador who sang the national anthem. Fleming did a great job, even keeping it going despite issues with the field microphone. By the end, most of the crowd was singing along with him. 

The men's lacrosse team is home Saturday against Syracuse, with the face-off at noon. The women's team will take on Columbia at 3:30 in the second game of the doubleheader on Sherrerd Field.

Before that game, the Princeton women have a game this afternoon at 4 at St. Joe's. The Hawks and the Tigers have some similar numbers, with save percentages, team shooting percentages, similar records, similar draw controls per game. 

Also, St. Joe's is a great place to watch a game. If you're going to be near Philadelphia, you should stop by.

The Princeton women have entered the stage of the season where there will be little rest. There are the two games this week and then a similar schedule each of the next two weeks, with games against Loyola and Brown next Wednesday and Saturday and then Penn and Dartmouth the Saturday after that. The regular season ends with a game at home against Harvard on April 30, with the Ivy tournament the weekend after that at the home of the No. 1 seed (the men's tournament will be at Yale). 

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available. 

Just The Fax

There seem to be two industries that are still waiting to adjust to the slightly new method of transferring information — the medical field and the financial sector.

Anywhere else, it seems, you can simply scan and email off whatever you need to send. For those two, though? For some reason, they still rely heavily on a technology that at one time was cutting edge and yet today has sort of moved past its prime.

That would be the fax machine.

A few months ago, when TigerBlog switched primary care doctors, he had to get his medical records set from one practice to another. He was told that the authorization to do so had to come by fax.

Fax? "Okay," TB said, "I'll just go to the Smithsonian and use the one they have on display there."

A fax machine? Seriously?

A week ago, TB once again found himself in a situation where he had to send information — confidential information at that — and yet the only way it could be done was through fax. Was there still a fax machine in Jadwin Gym?

As it turns out, there was. In Room 1. TB asked Associate Director of Athletics Kim Meszaros if there was a fax machine in her office, and the answer was "sort of." As it turns out, you can fax from the printer/copy machine, though hardly anyone ever does.

So off to Room 1 TB went. And once there, he found himself surrounded by a bunch of 30-somethings, and even 20-somethings, and guess what? None of them had ever sent a fax in their lives. 

For TB, sending the fax last week turned out to be something of a nostalgic thrill, especially when he heard the phone line dial out and connect to the other machine. Ah, those poor young people who have never experienced the pure joy of hearing those rings, followed by a long, melodious, wonderful tone on the other end. And pity anyone who has never uttered those five wonderful words "face up or face down."

Of course, the fax used to be the cutting edge of information transfer. What? You don't have to mail all this stuff? You can just stick it in the machine and off it goes? 

There was a time when faxing was the bedrock of sports information. Back and forth it went, with releases sent out and rosters and stats received. It could be a nightmare, especially if you got a busy signal. 

Do young people know what busy signals are?

As TB has written before, there used to be something called "Fax-on-Demand." This was a service where a release or a pregame story or something could be faxed to a central number, and then anyone who wanted that information could then call into that fax number and have it faxed to them, for a small fee.

The procedure was to finish whatever it was you were writing, print it out and then fax it to the number. It wasn't until you got the confirmation note that spit out at the end that you could exhale.

When a game was over, you'd fax out the results and release to whatever your distribution list was. At one point, there was an Ivy League athletic communications rule that said that you could only ask the home school to fax out to a maximum of four locations after a game. TB was in the meeting where all that was decided, and it really was a knock-down, drag-out between the "it has to be no more than four" and "well, five seems reasonable" gangs.

TigerBlog tried to mediate between the two, until he lost his mind over the idiocy of it all and said something along the lines that he would send as many faxes as he was asked to, assuming they all had a reason to be sent. For you young ones out there, you could create a group fax list, but for the visitors you usually just sent them one at a time, and you had to get the confirmation on each individually. It was very stressful.

Fortunately, those days are gone forever. 

Well, sort of forever.

A Few Shining Moments

Reminder — TigerBlog is now available at goprincetontigers.com/sports/tigerblog. The daily entries will be posted here for the near future as well before being completely moved to the main website. All archives will still be available. 

TigerBlog wasn't sure which team he was rooting for in the women's basketball NCAA championship game yesterday.

He's followed LSU coach Kim Mulkey's career since she was one of the first great women's basketball players, and now here she was on the verge of doing a Bill Tierney-type thing. 

Then there was Iowa's Caitlin Clark. She was just unbelievable to watch the entire season, but especially during this run to the championship game. It wasn't just her ability to score, though that was off the charts. It's also her court vision and the crispness of her passing.

In the end, even with some, er, questionable referring decisions, it would seem the better team won. LSU won its first NCAA women's basketball championship as it defeated Iowa 102-85, despite 30 points from the foul-troubled Clark, who was also hit with a ridiculous technical foul late in the third quarter.

For Mulkey, who was in tears in the final minute (and who was lucky that she didn't get a T of her own several times during the game), it was her fourth NCAA title, after she won three at Baylor. This was Year 2 at LSU for her, and she won the national championship with a team that had finished ranked nationally only twice since 2008, which happened to be the final year of a five-year Final Four run for the Tigers.

Here are some similarities between Mulkey and Tierney:

* took over a program that had never been in the NCAA tournament before and won multiple NCAA championships (Tierney won six men's lacrosse titles at Princeton)
* took over a second program that also had never won an NCAA title and won there (Tierney did so at Denver)

That's impressive stuff. 

Before the women's game began, TigerBlog did have one concern. What if Clark scored more than 58 in the game?

Princeton's Bill Bradley holds the NCAA Final Four record of 58 points in game, something he did in the 1965 consolation game against Wichita State. That record has stood for 58 years now, and it'll continue to be Bradley's unless someone in the San Diego State-UConn men's game tonight goes for at least 59.

Clark had back-to-back 40-point games prior to the final, including a 41-point night in the semifinal win over defending champion South Carolina. Bradley had 11 games in his career of at least 40 points, but only once did he do so in back-to-back games, and those were against Columbia and Cornell his senior year.

Bradley's name still all over the NCAA tournament record book. Bradley averaged 30.2 points per game for his Princeton career as a whole, but in NCAA tournament games he raised his level, averaging 33.7, with 303 in nine career NCAA games. In fact, his average in non-NCAA games was only 29.7.

The 33.7 points per game rank second in NCAA tournament history among players who have played in at least six games. Notre Dame's Austin Carr is first, at 41.3, which includes a 61-point outing in the 1970 first round against Ohio. It's the only point total that has ever topped Bradley's 58.

You know who's third and fourth on the career list? Oscar Robertson and Jerry West. If you're too young to know who they were, then you need to do a little research.

The college basketball season ends tonight with the men's final. It's a highly unlikely matchup, and it could be a good game. TB has nothing for or against either team; he just hopes it's a good one.

Even if it's not, though, it doesn't matter. The 2023 NCAA men's tournament belonged to three teams, none of whom is playing tonight.

The first almost was, only Florida Atlantic fell on a buzzer-beater against San Diego State Saturday. The second was FDU, which took down mighty Purdue, becoming only the second No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 on the men's side.

And the other? 

That would be Princeton, whose run to the Sweet 16 will be remembered long after any details of the Final Four are forgotten. 

You'll see plenty of the Tigers tonight on "One Shining Moment."

After all, they had quite a few of them all by themselves. This is April, and the championship game.

FAU, FDU and, yes, Princeton all owned March.